


Healing in the Key of G

by SongbirdAli



Category: Supernatural
Genre: Angst, Dean Has Been Gone, Death doesn't happen in story, Father Figures, Fluff, Warm and Fuzzy Feelings
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-10-15
Updated: 2018-10-15
Packaged: 2019-08-02 15:34:44
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Major Character Death
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,098
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/16307888
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/SongbirdAli/pseuds/SongbirdAli
Summary: Dean has been dead for a while, leaving behind a daughter who misses him fiercely but until now she didn't fully understand what it was that daddy did.  Cas makes it his primary focus to look after her so he's the one she turns to for answers to the tough questions..Short blurb for Creative Quest at SPNCLE.  They held us to 1k words for a prose entry so I'm sharing to see if there is any interest in this story and expanding on it.  Let me know what you think and by all means, constructive criticism is welcome!





	Healing in the Key of G

_The first night in her first apartment was almost too quiet.   She pushed the mattress across the hardwood floor into the corner of her bedroom and pressed her back to the wall, the chill on her skin bringing a gasp that echoed in the empty room.  Pulling the old guitar from its case, she began to play.  No particular melody, just something to soothe the ache._ _M_ _usic lived in her soul and every song was a moment otherwise forgotten.  Life hadn’t been easy, but she’d survived by funneling the bad times into a kind of musical balm. It was one of the only things that brought her out of the pain and loneliness that threatened to drown her, sometimes._

_A soft hum began low in her soul and finally floated softly out over the darkness of the room._  
  


_It had been a year since the hunting accident that took her father.  She’d never known him to hunt anything except car parts for the Impala that he left to her. Until yesterday, she thought her father spent his life running back and forth across the country restoring cars.  Her mother had explained about just what he’d been hunting. She couldn’t have ever imagined this truth._ _The acoustics allowed her voice to bloom and tip the atmosphere from one of somber introspection to a gentle hopefulness. Warm vibration rumbling in her chest soothed her aching heart.  The walls around her emotions began to buckle as the tension and strain of being alone in this big world swallowed her._ _Her voice cracked against the knot forming in her throat.  Slamming her open hand down onto the taut strings in frustration, she let the tears fall over her bare cheeks before scrubbing a hand over her face, a habit she’d picked up from her father as a child._

_She could feel the angel’s presence from across the dimly lit room._

_“Hello Castiel” she hummed as she began to play again._

_“Hello little one,” his gruff voice belied his warm smile._

_She didn’t know when he’d appear but she was always glad to see him.   There was such a sense of calm surrounding him, one she desperately needed._ _Ever since her father’s death, when she felt most vulnerable or was swimming in despair, he would appear. Now she understood why._ _Cas’ expression softened as he watched her ease into herself.  He had so many memories of her father belting out one song or another as his hand pounded the steering wheel while they were off trying to save the world from anything and everything.  Watching her grow into a young adult had been a privilege he didn’t know he needed to experience._

_He studied her face, sensing her longing for what she’d lost, what they’d all lost.  Anguish gripped him as he took in the soft bow of her legs in worn jeans, and what was obviously one of Dean’s old flannel shirts.  There was so much of her father present in her and he was all too aware of the emptiness his absence left._

_“To what do I owe the pleasure, Cas?” She smirked at him as she moved to put her guitar away.  A picture of she and her father pinned into the velvet lined lid caught her eye and gripped her heart.  She hated being so emotional._

_"_ _Your mother...she told you.” Castiel seemed uneasy._

_“She did.”  She took a deep breath and closed her eyes to block out the conversation.  It was tense and awkward and dripped of despair.  Her mother had never dealt with his death and now she felt like she was having to all over again._

_“What do you want to know?” He resigned himself to the fact that he was going to need to bring clarity to the situation, provide truth where there was bitterness and confusion._

_“Did he suffer?  Was it worth it?  Was there no one else that could have done what he did?” The words tumbled out as if they’d been dammed behind fear and the dam was crumbling._

_“We don’t believe he suffered. It was instantaneous, a ‘poof’, if you will.  I like to think it was worth it but I ask myself that question every day.  I guess time will tell.” Cas crossed his arms across his chest and cleared his throat as tears spilled over her cheeks.  Her green eyes glistened with more waiting to fall._

_“Did it have to be him?” She asked again quietly, feeling as if she knew the answer but wanted to hear it from her protector, her only confidant._

_“He was chosen for this purpose. I know it doesn’t help much, but it’s absolutely true.” He opened himself to her as she climbed off the bed and into his arms.  She was so grateful for him and the soothing calm that he’d brought to her life since she was a child.  He lay his cheek against the top of her head, listening to the sniffles soften wishing he could just take the pain away._

_“He...would have been proud of you.” His words weren’t enough and he knew it.  She sniffed again and wiped the tears away roughly, so much like Dean had years ago._

_“I work the closing shift in a rundown theater in Knoxville chasing a music career that probably isn’t going to happen.  I don’t really see much to be proud of, Cas.”  She rolled her eyes and turned to settle back onto the bed._

_“He wanted you to live your life your way and you are.  That’s what he did.”  He stopped abruptly surprised by the emotion he felt rising._

_“Come on, Cas…” she looked away and tried to hide her trembling lip behind shaky fingers._

_“Can I ask you for a favor?” He slipped his hands into his coat pockets nervously as she responded to him with a quizzical look. “Please?”_

_She nodded slowly before speaking, “which song?”_

_His face lit up like a child.  “His favorite. It feels appropriate.”  He grabbed the only chair in the room and sat with the back of it between his knees, his arms folded over the crest._

_Picking up her worn guitar, she began the first chords of the song, getting her fingers into the rhythm.  Her eyes closed as it came from her memory, sitting in the Impala next to her father, barreling down a country road as he sang at the top of his lungs._

 

**_“Carry on my wayward son_ **

**_For there'll be peace when you are done_ **

**_Lay your weary head to rest_ **

**_Don't you cry no more”_ **


End file.
